!Selenipedium chica Rchb.f. & Warsz. 1854
Photo by © Patricia Harding
TYPE Drawing By Rchb.f
Common Name The Beautiful Selenipedium
Flower Size 1" [2.5 cm]
Found in Panama, Choco, Cauca and Narino Colombia, Ecuador and Peru in well drained very humid areas on roadside banks and the floor of woodlands at elevations of 60 to 90 meters as a large to giant sized, hot growing terrestrial with an elongate, pubescent stem carrying longly acuminate, basally cuneate-oblong, plicate, narrowly elliptic leaves that blooms in the fall on a terminal, erect, densely pubescent, racemose, many flowered inflorescence with a lanceolate, acute floral bract.
Easily confused with Selenipedium aequinoctiale but separated by the wider leaf and the different staminode. It is separated from Selenipedium palmifolium by the shortly stalked, elliptic-lanceolate, acute, and much exceeds the staminode versus subsessile, ovate and truncate and barley exceeding he staminode.
Natives of Panama use the fruits of this species to concoct an extract much like vanilla.
This is the undoubtedly the tallest orchid in the new world.
Synonyms Cypripedium chica (Rchb.f.) Pfitzer 1881;
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;
